number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

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Elena Calandri
Above all though from 1950 onwards, while France struggled under the burden of
the Indo-China war, West Germany's economic performance and international status
improved dramatically so, besides repugnance towards the partial watering
down of the French army into the "mélange apatride" denounced by General de
Gaulle, economic opposition to the EDC evolved also from the belief that it would
be the precursor to a common market and that this "would merely lead to German
industrial domination whilst France reverted to agriculture with the help of a flood
of surplus Italian and Dutch labour". 3 All these arguments came to a head with the
painful disengagement that culminated on 30 August 1954 with the French Assembly
rejecting the Paris Treaty.
The way out of the crisis was to be found in Germany's dual admission to
NATO and a revamped Brussels Pact, to be renamed the Western European Union
(WEU). Working out this settlement, secured a place in history for Anthony Eden,
the British foreign secretary, who committed British troops to the defence of the
Continent while shrewdly driving France to compromise. 4 However, since the failure
of the EDC had been due to psychological, economic and political reasons
allied to complex changes, the Paris Agreements were not just a brilliant diplomatic
settlement but deeply influenced also the political and economic history of Western
Europe. It is from this viewpoint that all the competing plans, aborted proposals,
parallel political and economic initiatives need also to be taken into account. The
French government's initiative for an Armaments Agency and for the pooling of the
whole of the Continent's arms production fell into all three categories. It deserves
attention and deeper analysis than has been given to it thus far.
Searching for new Directions, Armaments and France's German Policy
In their efforts to deny Germany the means for military and political dominance in
Europe, French governments considered armaments to be a key issue. Limiting and
controlling armaments had been an essential task for the EDC During the Paris
negotiations the Armaments Committee had worked out a comprehensive system
whereby Member States would lose their freedom to manufacture strategic materials.
Instead powers were granted to a Board of Commissioners, assisted by a Consultative
Committee, to prepare and execute joint programmes for armaments,
equipment, supplies and the infrastructure for European forces, granting the Member
States permits for producing weapons for non-NATO national forces and for
3. Public Record Office, Kew (hereafter PRO): FO 371/112794 WF1103/12, O. Harvey (Paris) no.82
(E), 26 February 1954, thoroughly analyses the economic roots of "the very noticeable waning of
French enthusiasm for European integration schemes in recent months"; on the military attitude
toward the EDC see especially P. GUILLEN, "La France et l'intégration de la RFA dans l'OTAN",
Guerres Mondiales et conflits contemporains, Jul. 1990, 73-9.
4. S. DOCKRILL, Britain's Policy for West German Rearmament, 1950-1955, Cambridge 1991; two
essays of John W. Young in J.W. YOUNG (ed.), The Foreign Policy of Churchill's Peacetime Administration
1951-1955, Leicester 1988.